"How to sound like" project

AFAIK, all my guitar heroes never used a Kemper. They used tube amps. But if you are going to build a database of their signal chain of individual songs then I'm all in. I just don't see how you can get that info since many of the artists never share their exact settings of an amp or effect.

Quote from cmillauriaux

Yes it's my ambition ! Make a database of signal chain by guitarist, album and/or song in one side and a database of equivalent in factory amps and factory effects in the other side. After that, we could generate or submit equivalence between real rig used by our Guitar Heroes and a configuration on Kemper.

But you're right, the hardest part will be to collect this information. But I see everyday on social media some posts where there is photography of guitar hero equipment, so I think we can put them manually in the database gradually.

What do you think about that ?

Absolutely I would love that, there was a website that did it before called Guitar Geek, they took the site down for some reason, but here is an archive of the site. _ I loved to go on there before and look, it had the signal chain diagrams and all the details. This was before I had the Kemper but it would be nice to have now. Now guitargeek.com goes to the Vanderbilly YouTube channel. I don't know if they are affiliated or if Vanderbilly just bought the .com name. -- Here is another site that does that.

The trick will be not to just post the type and brand of gear they used but those elusive settings they used. If you can get that info then I'd subscribe!

Your first project is to get me settings for Neil "Spyder" Geraldo @ Pat Benatar's tone. He never used much effects and I think he had some dry signal in his tone. Killer sound!

This is what happens when you tell programmers to "shelter in place."

I have a suggestion for your project that might make it both more useful and more in harmony with Kemper's own efforts.

Rig Manager has a gazillion profiles and there's a fair amount of metadata, but it's still difficult to find what you're looking for sometimes. Many people (like me when I first got the Kemper) think of a profile in terms of an amp. So I downloaded all these Marshalls and hated them. Turns out they were dialed in for metal (and awesome for that) but I play classic rock. So it's not about the amp, it's about the tone you're looking for. I don't care if a Marshall can do metal, funk, or jazz. I want the sound that I want, not some specific amp.

I think your "how to sound like" idea is good because it gives people a known reference point. If you say sound like the xyz song from the abc band, I'll know exactly what that tone is. However, and this is the suggestion, I don't think listing all their gear and settings would be the biggest payoff for the Kemper crowd. Honestly, I don't care if it's a Pignose with a 57 or a Fender Twin run through 14 different pedals. All I care about is getting the sound.

What if your database was how to get the xyz song's tone, and what I find when I look that up is a reference to one or more Kemper profiles that would give me that sound? They could be free from Rig Manager or commercial. Maybe with some extra notes like use this effect on the verse, turn it off and use the another effect on the chorus, but the main thing is point me to the profile that will give me "the sound."

This approach would benefit commercial profilers, shine a spotlight on the great free profiles in Rig Manager, and allow the user to find "that sound" by looking it up on your website and then going to find that profile. Everyone wins, and the ease of use factor would be huge because many guitarists are exactly as lazy as I am. I don't care about the 7 pedal settings the guy in the band used to get the tone. Just tell me which profile to use.

Of course, you'll need to make sure you stay on the straight and narrow legally and not use any intellectual property, pictures, brands, etc. that you don't have permission to use. (Pro tip for the younger generation: just because you say it's "fair use" doesn't mean it actually is.) You'll also want to make sure you comply with any relevant terms of service from Kemper regarding Rig Manager and other such things. But as long as you're diligent about that sort of thing, I think you could build a very useful resource for Kemper crowd.

Quote from cmillauriaux

But you're right, the hardest part will be to collect this information. But I see everyday on social media some posts where there is photography of guitar hero equipment, so I think we can put them manually in the database gradually.

What do you think about that ?

actually, finding the information is unlikely to be even close to being the hardest part. Most of that info is out there already. I remember growing up through the 80’s and 90’s reading Guitar Player and reading all the interviews about what gear my heroes were using. However, when it comes to classic recordings the sound is way more than the guitarist’s rig. Itsnthe room it was recorded in, the mics used AND their positions, the Mic preamps/desk, Eq, Compression etc. Most of the time the artists were totally unaware of that (sometimes because the didn’t understand it but had an engineer that did butmften because they were too drunk or stoned to care ?).

It is very easy to find most guitarist’s signal chains and copy them i. The Kemper. However, the sound of a profiled rig is the amp, FX and mic etc. Just listing the gear the guitarist used will only get a fraction of the way there.

However, a website that didn’t just list the gear but actually walked through how to tweak settings, what to listen for when doing so etc would be a valuable resource.

Quote from Wheresthedug

Itsnthe room it was recorded in, the mics used AND their positions, the Mic preamps/desk, Eq, Compression etc. Most of the time the artists were totally unaware of that (sometimes because the didn’t understand it but had an engineer that did butmften because they were too drunk or stoned to care ?).

Neil Geraldo had his mics in back of the open-backed cabs. Makes all the difference.

Yes, that is a fairly common technique.

I agree with you about Neil’s tone. Pat isn’t one of my all time favourite singers (although I do like some of her stuff) so I don’t listen to Neil enough but both his sound and tone are definitely massively under rated.

Consider what the engineer, producer and mastering is doing to the sound.

You have Rooms, Mics, EQ, FX, Plug-ins, compression and all sorts of manipulation.

I work with studios who are willing to share their process with me.

The amp and pedals are just the beginning of the destination.

Quote from Wheresthedug

Yes, that is a fairly common technique.

I agree with you about Neil’s tone. Pat isn’t one of my all time favourite singers (although I do like some of her stuff) so I don’t listen to Neil enough but both his sound and tone are definitely massively under rated.

Another underrated tone I like is Pat Travers. Love that Crash and Burn LP. But yes, Jimi, Jimmy, EVH, Alex Lifeson, Rik Emmett, all those guys I study for tone.

It's funny, recently I was thinking about something a bit like what you propose, and hesitated to post something....

I'm curently working hard on a song, and I found a rig that is almost the good tone, but I feel it needs some fine tuning to be better. And I was about to post something to propose the community to help me in dialing it, a sort of "collaborative tone matching thread". In my mind, with time different evolutions of my initial rig, or even other new ideas to match this particular tone would have come, and people could have voted for their favorite one(s) etc... But in fact what you propose could be a way to do it, what do you think?